Long time no see.....

GraceSeeker said:

So, how is everyone. After years if posting on CF and in the WP almost daily, I suspect it's been a year or more since I've been here. I still see a few familiar names, and some that will have no idea who I am. But, I just thought I would stop back by to say "Hi!" to those who are still hanging out here. Hope your life has been and is continuing to be a blessed one.

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GraceSeeker said:

Talk about resurrecting an old thread. I see that it has once again been a year since I last posted. 369 days in fact. Life has certainly changed for me. My D.S. called me in to the conference office and told me that she had decided that I should seek early retirement effective December 31. She told me I had time to process and to think of my next steps before submitting my letter, but within a week she had sent me a letter demanding my letter by the end of that week. I refused. My wife and I were already going through marriage counseling at the time, her lack of support in that meeting strained our relationship enough that I brought up the idea of seeking a legal separation at a subsequent (though not the immediate next) counseling appointment. But, even the therapist was surprised when she learned that my wife then move out a week later, as the therapist had not understood me to be seeking to move forward on that immediately and certainly was not talking divorce. Then I learned 2nd hand, from my D.S., that my wife was seeking a divorce.

Yet, even as my professional and personal life fell apart it was strangely coming together at the same time.

Many years ago I had felt the call to be a full-time missionary after a trip to a mission school we were building in Chile. That was 1992. I had just turned 35 three months before that trip, and I was told on my return that unless I had a special skill like doctor or airplane mechanic, that being just a pastor I was too old. They didn't need pastors beyond the age of 30. That sending American pastors smacked of colonialism when what we really needed were indigenous pastors. So, I put my application away. 15 years later, the missionary at the school I had helped build and had a continuing relationship with retired, and because giving across the UMC was down we were not appointing any new missionaries at all. Thus the mission that was so special to me was left with no one at the helm. It had it's local board of directors, and the secretary who had been with the missionary for the last 16 years (and who was also a good friend of mine), and that was it. Susana, the secretary, was left in defacto charge of day-to-day operations. But her education ended at high school. The board of directors where good men and women, but had no real working knowledge of how things worked in the US, and thought that they would just ask and would thus receive. Lots of church who had been supporters of the mission were really supporters of the missionary and when he retired they directed their funds elsewhere. So, things were desperate and Susana would contact me two or three times a week asking for advice. Then, one day after make a suggestion that both radically altered the plans that were being made, yet also proved to be more productive, Susana says to me, you should just come down here and run this program for us. And I thought, yeah, maybe this was that door opening up after all this time.

But it wasn't. I did manage to make a two month trip to Chile to serve in the church there, but by the time I was able to put it together enough time had passed that another person, quite capable, had stepped up and was running things. So, my time was spent in other parts of Chile, except that I was there when an 8.1 earthquake hit with the epicenter of it just 15 km from the school I had built. Amazingly, we had a few cracked walls, but no lost buildings. And, so I was able to rush back to the school to help with repairs to the school and clean-up in the surrounding community where people's homes and the towns infrastructure had not been as fortunate as our construction. But this was still just short-term ministry and not the opening to full-time service. Over and over not only did doors not open, windows didn't really either. I continued to plug away in the local pastorate (even winning an evangelism award two years ago), and enjoying serving the people there.

Every now and then there would be some opportunity I would try to investigate, but things at home always prevented me in some way. It was like I was tethered by debt, obligations, or my wife's disabilities (which were significant following two strokes, at age 36 & 38). We had taken up hosting foster children and international exchange students, and found a real ministry in that which gave us contacts and genuine familial connections around the world. As a result I now speak 4 languages, have 15 children on 4 continents and 10 countries.

Then the above events. And as a pastor I not only lose my job, I lose my home, my health insurance, everything. Effective the first of the year I would be homeless, and with a disabled wife too. But, suddenly, doors once closed began opening up exactly because the D.S. had cut all tethers for me. Even though when I appealed to the bishop, he offered to a new appointment, I decided to take the early retirement option anyway. So, now I am in Africa investigating offers to teach a brand new (not even announced) Methodist University in Kitwe, Zambia; teach youth ministry at a non-denominational seminary in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (where 4 members of my family are from); or assist with training and equipping young pastors in Uganda north of Kampala (where my biological son has lived the last 5 years). And another well established school that I know personally in Chile has also asked if I could come help them as a teaching assistant.

In each of these places I have friends and/or family, and some are extremely close. Today, as I write this, I sit at a home in Nasana, Uganda with a little four-year old on my lap who calls me her Muzungo Daddy. I had found out her mother (a casual friend) couldn't afford to send her daughter to school, but that it would only cost me $118 to pay for her tuition for a term. I just couldn't bring myself to ignore it, especially when I knew from my son and others how in Uganda where one goes to school has life-long consequences for good or for ill depending on what one is able to afford. And at $118 I was putting her in the upper track of possibilities. I didn't even tell her mom about it until I had it worked out and surprised her with it. That just happen to set things in motion so that we've become considerably closer since then, and when she learned about all that was going on in my life, she offered up her home (originally to both me and my wife until my wife moved out), and I decided to accept, at least long enough to make this exploratory visit to Africa so that she has allowed herself to become my base of exploratory operations.

So, the apple cart got thoroughly upset. And yet, those apples that I have picked back up don't seem to be bruised at all. My life seems ordered, Spirit-directed, with purpose, and at peace.

How have you all been doing this past year?

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